Digital Transformations in the Challenge of Activity and Work

11The New Physical Territories of Digital Activity

This chapter questions the outlines and issues related to space as an object of research and action for work psychologists. Many companies choose to deploy flexible workspace solutions that involve non-assigned desks. Our contribution seeks to address the psychological and psychosocial impacts of these complex social and technical arrangements. In order to do so, we draw on research carried out within the IT subsidiary of a large French group and present different theoretical models likely to account for the transformations of space, as embedded within activities.

11.1. Introduction

The spread of digital tools is considerably reshaping the spatio-temporal boundaries of work (Valenduc and Vendramin 2016) and is contributing to the emergence of a new organizational model that values autonomy, trust and communication. In today’s organizations, employees are encouraged to become actors in the transformation of their work practices and skills development (Ughetto 2007). In this context, many tertiary companies choose to deploy flexible workspace solutions, that is, shared offices, unallocated desks and open spaces. From a managerial point of view, the implementation of these office solutions are justified, among other things, by the indirect benefits (Evette and Fenker 2011) that they can bring, particularly in terms of individual and collective performance or knowledge sharing. In other words, the workspace tends to become an ...